Petrilli: The depression is good for corporate charters.
Mike Petrilli of the Fordham house of wing-nuts is rubbing his hands at the business possibilities the economic collapse presents for corporate for-profit charter schools.
A silver lining, he says.
Out of the 4,000-odd charter schools in the country, quite a few are tiny little mom-and-pop operations that are financially and academically marginal. If tight budgets pushed them over the edge and forced them to close, that wouldn’t be such an awful thing. Even if we ended up with fewer charter schools, the ones that remained would be, on average, stronger. No one sheds tears for Circuit City or Linens-n-Things because we still have Best Buy and Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Likewise for mediocre charter schools that disappear.
By mediocre, Petrilli means the small independent teacher initiated schools. Not to worry. We’ll still have the “Best Buy” schools.
